It seems Blue Jays’ right-hander Marcus Stroman has been fighting a downhill battle all his life. That’s right, downhill because that’s the necessary pitching skill scouts and GMs say short pitchers cannot succeed at in terms of creating deep angle and missing the bats of opposing hitters.

Stroman is listed at five-foot-nine in the Jays’ media guide and even that assigned height may be a slight exaggeration. And no matter how good his minor-league numbers have been, the battle he and other vertically-challenged pitchers face is against the axiomatic bias among scouts and front office folks in Major League Baseball that short right-handers cannot be starters. Stroman doesn’t buy it at all.

“It’s just motivated me to work that much harder,” Stroman said prior to the game against the Phillies on Thursday. “I was born this way, so it’s not something where you can change your height.

“You have to make the best out of every situation. I feel like I’m capable of doing the same thing that your prototypical six-foot-two, six-foot-three pitcher, that (every scout) looks for, can do. It’s just the fact that I have to be more precise. I have to pitch more down in the (strike) zone. I have to be more fine with my pitches. I have all the confidence that is in me to overcome the height stature.”

The Jays drafted Stroman 22nd overall in 2012 out of Duke University. Jays assistant GM Tony LaCava believes the “short men can’t pitch” perception may have started in MLB when the mounds were lowered to encourage more offence following the ‘68 season. LaCava believes that’s when it was determined by scouts that shorter pitchers were not able to get the same downward angle as they previously did from higher ground. Scouts took it as a reason not to sign pitchers under five-foot-10.

LaCava believes the perceived short-man syndrome is the reason those pitchers mostly end up in relief, challenged as they are by the downward angle of delivery. Over the course of a start it leads to more mistakes. Some examples of short pitchers that were better as relievers are Tom (Flash) Gordon and Jason Frasor. Gordon, the man to whom Stroman is most often compared, began as a starter with the Royals and Red Sox from 1988-97 before moving to the pen from ’97 to 2009.

“Maybe it’s kept a few guys from being drafted,” Jays pitching coach Pete Walker said. “You definitely hear it, especially on the player development side, a guy being too short. But to me, it doesn’t make sense. If you can create angle on the baseball and you can spin the baseball and you’ve got plus velocity and you’re a competitor, those are things that can keep you in the big leagues a long time.”

Stroman is trying to be the next big thing in myth busting. His motto: height doesn’t measure heart, which he has parlayed into a line of T-shirts and accessories. He is desirous of being a major-league starter as much as the Jays. In fact, his current time in the bullpen may just be a stop-gap on the way to joining the rotation. And now that his service-time clock has started ticking, it will happen soon. If he has to get optioned back to Triple-A Buffalo to stay stretched out, it’s all good.

“If I can pitch at the knees, then that allows me to elevate,” Stroman self-analyzed. “I can’t get away with pitching up in the zone like a lot of tall pitchers can because I don’t have that downhill plane. It’s something that Pete (Walker) and Dane Johnson and (Paul Quantrill) have preached to me and I’ve been aware of it since I’ve been pitching. As long as I’m down in the zone I can be just as effective, because when I am down in the zone I do have tilt. Obviously it’s not six-foot-six tilt to the ball, but I do get on top of the ball pretty good when I pitch low and then elevate when I need to.”

Stroman was called up in Pittsburgh, because the next two starters, Dustin McGowan and J.A. Happ, were uncertainties as to how deep they could go. The Long Island native was ready to fill in for multiple innings. McGowan and Happ responded and Stroman is in major-league limbo.

“In college you can get away with a lot more than you can in pro, obviously,” Stroman said. “College is college and professional is the best hitters in the world. So in college I didn’t really focus on pitching down in the zone. I was more of a thrower than a pitcher at that time. But since I’ve been in pro ball I’ve really started to learn how to truly pitch. It really is an art. There’s so much that goes into it, rather than just throwing. I’ve learned a ton since I’ve been in pro ball.”

The final word on the Jays’ prized student belongs to Stroman’s pitching coach, Walker.

“It’s a moot point and something that doesn’t concern me,” Walker said of Stroman’s supposed disadvantage. “Watching Marcus throw, he’s a 95-96 mile-per-hour fastball and he stays on top of the ball and creates that angle that he needs. He can be as effective as anybody in the game.”

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